A fair disposal, this, of a man who was scarcely fit to run at large, most reasonable persons would say; but all did not think so.  John von Goerlitz, the younger brother of the emperor, fearing public scandal from such a transaction, induced the princes who held him to set him free.  It proved a fatal display of kindness and family affection for himself.  The imperial captive was no sooner free than, concealing the wrath which he felt at his incarceration, he invited to a banquet certain Bohemian nobles who had aided in it.  They came, trusting to the fact that the tiger’s claws seemed sheathed.  They had no sooner arrived than the claws were displayed.  They were all seized, by the emperor’s order, and beheaded.  Then the dissimulating madman turned on his benevolent brother John, who had taken control of affairs in Bohemia during his imprisonment, and poisoned him.  It was a new proof of the old adage, it is never safe to warm a frozen adder.

The restoration of Wenceslas was followed by other acts of folly.  In the following year, 1395, he sold to John Galcazzo Visconti, of Milan, the dignity of a duke in Lombardy, a transaction which exposed him to general contempt.  At a later date he visited Paris, and here, in a drunken frolic, he played into the hands of the King of France by ceding Genoa to that country, and by recognizing the antipope at Avignon, instead of Boniface IX. at Rome.  These acts filled the cup of his folly.  The princes of the empire resolved to depose him.  A council was called, before which he was cited to appear.  He refused to come, and was formally deposed, Rupert, of the Palatinate, being elected in his stead.  Ten years afterwards, in 1410, Rupert died, and Sigismund became Emperor of Germany.

Meanwhile, Wenceslas remained King of Bohemia, in spite of his brother Sigismund, who sought to oust him from this throne also.  He took him prisoner, indeed, but trusted him to the Austrians, who at once set him free, and the Bohemians replaced him on the throne.  Some years afterwards, war continuing, Wenceslas sought to get rid of his brother Sigismund in the same manner as he had disposed of his brother John, by poison.  He was successful in having it administered to Sigismund and his ally, Albert of Austria, in their camp before Zuaym.  Albert died, but Sigismund was saved by a rude treatment which seems to have been in vogue in that day.  He was suspended by the feet for twenty-four hours, so that the poison ran out of his mouth.

The later events in the life of Wenceslas have to do with the most famous era in the history of Bohemia, the reformation in that country, and the stories of John Huss and Ziska.  The fate of Huss is well known.  Summoned before the council at Constance, and promised a safe-conduct by the Emperor Sigismund, he went, only to find the emperor faithless to his word and himself condemned and burnt as a heretic.  This base act of treachery was destined to bring a bloody retribution.  It infuriated the reformers in Bohemia, who, after brooding for several years over their wrongs, broke out into an insurrection of revenge.